Google May Delete Your Inactive Google Account, and the Productivity and Technology News of the Week.

Each week, Ray Sidney-Smith ( https://twominuterule.com) and Augusto Pinaud ( https://productivityvoice.com/) review and provide commentary on the week’s news in the world of personal productivity and related technologies.

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Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

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HEADLINES, PART A

HEADLINES, PART B

Tools of the Week

FEATURED STORY OF THE WEEK

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:02
Hello, personal productivity enthusiast and community Welcome to Anything But Idle. The Productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. And I’m Augusto Pinaud and we’re hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 115. Google may delete your inactive Google account. And we’re recording this on May 22 2023. Each week, we cover the productivity news headlines of the week. So you know what’s going on in the world of personal productivity and related technology. With that a Gousto. Let’s get on to our headlines for this week, our productivity headline, our first productivity headline of the week is,

Augusto Pinaud 0:39
is the number one workplace distractions that kills productivity, according to Microsoft, and will very interesting because it’s not a secret that teams are assume or any of this one so far, I was not expecting that the research from Microsoft will have make public that easily shooting themselves. But it is true. You know, one of the things is we went from on to that every mode that we are getting in most companies and a lot of that quick interruption that by the way, I will remind people we used to complain about it heavily of people looking into under like, hello, okay, now, we aren’t complaining about the amount of meetings. And yes, we need a balance or middle. I don’t know how that works. But it was very interesting to see that the numbers that Microsoft had, and how many people get close to those eight hours of meetings. And that’s something I have seen in clients meetings, to meetings to meetings, and sometimes two and three meetings in the same a slog and how do you do it? You know, how do you do two meetings at the same time? And for most people, the answer is they do neither. You know, and it is a problem, because not only now these people is here, but they’re not present on neither meetings. And instead of being more effective, what we see is big impact in productivity, a big impact and expensive impact in the sessions, because people thought they were in the meeting making decisions, but they were not really paying the level of attention needed for the decision that was required.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:42
Yeah, I think you said it all. I think it’s the only thing that I would remark on is that I give Microsoft a great deal of credit in doing this research and realizing that their own software is a part of the culprit. Yeah, you know, and and publishing it notwithstanding, you know, being being legitimate research and showing that so good on them. All right, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 3:04
Our next one comes from idea pod. And he says if someone displayed these 12 traits, they are a master in time management. And there’s a couple of things. It’s a great article, and comes with 12 traits. And I agree with most of them. The only thing that I will start the article for is the advice I give to people and is understand why do you want to be that master of time management? Because one of the things I have seen over the years is what people really want to be is a master on checking boxes. And knowing they the first thing they have is they know how to prioritize well. What are you prioritizing? And, and knowing how to prioritize doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re really looking forward, you’re really, really looking to where you are going to be. So that’s the only thing I like I you know, I will we’ll have love for the article. You know, the other thing that 12 theories say Now, prior eyes having a sense of time, they’re highly organized. That one that was if I have known people who I admire in the world of productivity that there anything but organize, they just in their inner mass, they somehow are incredibly productive. So I don’t know what you thought about the article.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:38
I disagreed with number five, of course, that they that these folks are incredibly disciplined. You know, like, some people are incredibly disciplined. Most people just have a system and they’ve built a system and they and they follow the well worn paths of their routines. And so yes, there’s a willpower issue here where it’s that some of these folks do have a higher reservoir or well of willpower and or they have a greater mo rotational mission and so therefore they, they stick to those things. So I’m always I’m always concerned when we, when we use discipline as a failing in time management or personal productivity, it’s the same thing as with, you know, we talked about the moral failings of, of poor people or of any other minority class, it’s a danger in the personal productivity space because it doesn’t create a psychological safety for us to be able to expand and develop those skills. So just anyone listening, you know, just be mindful of, of the of the word discipline over the other more appropriate healthy terms for being able to create systems and to create the latticework the routine that allows you to be able to fall into the right things, right. It’s just like, not buying junk food in the house is not discipline, right? It’s that you don’t have it available to you that when you have your, you know, you’re not your best self, you’re not going to go ahead and pick up the potato chips as opposed to an apple, right? That’s just creating the right pathways for us to make good choices. Alright, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 5:58
Oh, our next article. It’s from Scott, John, I read a lot the Scott Young and the title is some thoughts on becoming self actualized. And I begin laughing because it’s so well I read her email me sit on a couple of example of people who abruptly change their life and they start exercising, building better habits. And suddenly success came in. And he even talked about his experience around 15 When this happened, and the reason I laugh is because people think this is an overnight change. And what most people miss is how long these people have been peeling the onion, you know, rarely, unless there is a really impact thing on the life on people. Most of these changes are never overnight, we notice it overnight. But for many of these people, it’s the work of yours of yours, of tweaking things and fixing things. That said, self actualization is a real thing. And I believe many of the people who read the books and study and look how to make themselves better, and how to find where and how they get where they are, and how where and how they need to adjust. So they can go where they want to go. And that for me, is selfish.

So the other thing, interestingly, here is a word of advice that is not in that in in the article. But be aware that when you decide to self actualize yourself, you will find a lot of people very close to you very dear to you. Who because of fear or because the lack of self actualization of themselves or fear of they will try to discourage you, you know, to do that. And it is very hard, because those are normally the people who you care for that you’re looking for that support. So that’s very important. When you read these things. Sometimes they said, the best thing you can do to self actualize is Don’t tell anybody. And maybe that is the reason as Scott said on the article that we discovered these people that overnight change.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:28
You know, one of the things that I find to be most useful about the article is kind of dovetailing very nicely from the prior article, which is that your environment and the the things that you bring around yourself the basically allows for a pathway for you to be able to have success in that space, including and self actualization. For those of you who don’t know, self actualization is really that highest point of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Now, Maslow did not design the pyramid, the pyramid is a construct after him, he didn’t really consider this a, you know, a foundation with layers that built upon themselves, he really considered to consider it a continuum, whereby we would throughout the course of our days, weeks, months, years and lives, basically find ourselves in different points toward self actualization. So self actualization is once we’ve built up all of the appropriate needs, right base level needs, whether that be food, shelter, excretion, sex, and otherwise, we then keep making our way up closer toward getting and feeling a sense of belonging and relationships and so on, so forth, till we reach that that kind of zenith, in the in the pyramid of self actualization. We don’t live there, by the way, we just touch it at points in our lives. And so that’s the only thing that I would probably be concerned about with people is thinking that they need to live in self actualization. It’s not where we live. We live by basically traversing those various stages of self actualization throughout the day. I mean, you eat every day you sleep every day. You do all of these things every day. So we go up and down. On or back and forth between that those levels or those that continuum, kind of the pendulum swinging self actualization are just moments or glimmers of that. And if you create the right systems, the right environment, you can fall closer and better into those spaces. And so I feel most self actualized when I’m sitting in reading, right, and so, or when I’m meditating, those are points where I feel very close to that feeling of self actualization. So that might be different for everybody, or it is different for everybody. So you need to find out what that feels like for you, and lean into that. And then don’t get so caught up on reaching self actualization, more than striving every day to enjoy the journey, right? Because if you enjoy the journey along to it, then the moments when you do reach, it won’t be as grandiose and therefore there won’t be this, you know, it’s kind of like a drug addiction, right? You hit that little Zenith. And then all you do is look for that next dopamine hit of being in that space. And that ultimately sets you up for less eudaimonia, right? Less happiness, less feelings of contentment, and really, that’s what you’re going for with self actualization, you’re going for contentment, you’re not going for some ecstatic, joyful moments you’re looking for the ability to feel that level of calm and serenity, amongst the things that you’re doing in your life. All right, on to our next article. Agusta perfect.

Augusto Pinaud 11:18
Our next article is from pick the brain. And I talked about sorry, move digital detox, and why did you need it. And he’s interesting, because nobody, or at least, I don’t remember when the fastest speed of digitalization and that is the appearance of the Blackberry, that was the first device that at least I will recognize that is start kneading on when that’s when we start talking about the toxin and addiction about the smartphone, I don’t remember, the three days of the BlackBerry people being or having those conversations about addictions, the first time I heard addiction, it was tied up, at least on my brain was a Blackberry. But the reality is that having these devices being connected all the time, really cause issues, because we remove that space to think and I believe firmly believed that everybody needed everybody need to disconnect for a little bit of these devices. And, and I’m not saying not have devices, I’m saying, find devices that are not connected or set up your devices. So you disconnect through to certain kinds of inputs, I read on my devices, but I have a device, Kindle, okay, where I can go offline, and read and focus because one of the things is that dopamine rush. And the problem is, as we get the rush, and the rush and the rush, we start losing sensibility. And when we lose sensibility, what we want is more of that. So we want more distractions, more notifications, that are the end of the day, from my perspective, in the world of productivity will make you less and less and less effective.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:24
Yeah, I, you know, the article provides me with two perspectives here. One is that we can cherry pick, cherry pick statistics and make an argument for anything. I agree with you with the idea of being able to step away from technology and to find a place where we find balance with that technology, right, there was just an appropriateness of kind of in the the Episcopal world right, they talked about the right relationship, right and and so I very much believe in being in right relationship with your technology. And I think that there’s, there’s an important internal set of, of awareness that you need to figure out as to whether or not doing all of this is worthwhile for you, and how much you need to step away from that technology. Especially if you start to see things so you know, the the idea behind an addiction, right? If you think about addiction, addiction is something that starts to compete with your everyday functions, right, your everyday what we call activities of daily living, right, getting up getting dressed, engaging with the world, eating those kinds of things. And then of course, your social relationships, your work, if it’s impeding those things, then of course, you need to be able to be mindful of that fact and and step back beyond the kind of disordered or addiction space. For us in general life. We are attached to the internet all day long, and by virtue of our phones and all the various technology that we’re really forced to use in work and school and otherwise. So I don’t particularly find the statistics that we spend so much time on and connected to the internet, all that you know, like can In saying it’s not compelling to me that that means we’re in a bad space, what I do find to be compelling is that we have a lot of mental health crisis going on. And especially in young people. And I don’t know whether there’s a spurious relationship between the connection to technology, or just the fact that they are overwhelmed by the number and amount of caustic individuals, right, people who are unhealthy expressing themselves, in a medium where they have access to that, right and yesteryear, they would not have been, and would not have been connected to that many people, they would have known just a few people in their village, and maybe they would have had a pen pal, you know. And now you’re connected to hundreds and 1000s, and millions of other people. And that flood of information, I think, can be potentially deleterious to the overall mental health of young people, as far as adults are concerned, I think that, you know, we, that have been around and connected to technology since the palm days, and the Crackberry days, we are still just incredibly excited. I think most of us who are in that age band are just incredibly excited to have access to the technology, then there’s still a little bit of that, I mean, I have that I have that youthful excitement about having new technology and playing with new technology. And I think a lot of you who are listening and watching also have that sense of it. So I don’t know how much of that is negative or positive? But that’s something that you have to kind of check, right? Is that negative or positive in your life? And and also, how do the people around you feel about it? Right? Like, do they feel like you’re always with your face on the phone instead of making eye contact and having a conversation at dinner? Or are you in meetings, not engaging as much as you are interacting with your digital technology, as opposed to providing feedback and eye contact and all those things. So like, you can get some general feedback and provide yourself with everything you need that is not necessarily a digital detox, and in the way in, which is explained here in the article. All right. And so with that, we have reached the end of our personal productivity articles. For this week, we’re going to take a break now to hear a word from our sponsor, and then we will be back with the technology headlines, our new tools of the week and all that fun stuff after the break.

Sponsor Voice Over 17:15
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:26
Welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle. A guest you and I are now going to head into our technology headlines this week. Augusto, What is our first technology headline this week?

Augusto Pinaud 18:37
The first we have its podcast where you were interview me and my Evernote with Raymond Sidney-Smith. And we just wanted to mention it for our listeners. If you are an Evernote user, this was a great interview that you can go and listen to there is not going to be a lot of spoilers but go and listen.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:01
Yes, onward to the next stories.

Augusto Pinaud 19:04
So our next story it’s an article for Business Insider and he’s there forever labor shortage may have been maybe on the productivity but it is interesting because is one of those articles that it’s a lot of read how we are not going to solve we need better perks and I always wonder when these articles come and this self professed crisis calm is really just an adjustment on on the market and is finally leveling up with where it should be.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:45
I see it as a as a net positive. I think that this is going to be a an adjustment as you said, but the reality is is that baby boomers have been in the market and those of you who are baby boomers if you want to stay in the market By all means do so not saying. But a lot of them were forced to continue working throughout the pandemic. And there were a number of different reasons for that. And some of them had been waiting for the markets to rebound. And some of them had been waiting for other kinds of things to click into gear. And to be, quite honestly, to be quite honest, you know, the, the baby boomers working later and later into their age has, has really suppressed the ability for millennials and younger, not necessarily Gen X. And maybe maybe there’s an argument that Gen X was was affected also, but really millennials and younger have been a have been basically suppressed in the market because they have been not been able to elevate into the positions that baby boomers were able to elevate much earlier in life. And so while baby boomers might say, Oh, well Millennials feel entitled and and that they are not, you know, taking responsibility for things and so on so forth those kinds of trope, those all absolutely and unabashedly false, you know, I’m not a millennial in any likeness of it. And so I, I still see a lot of millennials in my own world, and they are, they are people who have dealt with a lot of strife during their generations of coming into the world, into the, into the workforce. And so I feel incredibly, you know, like, compassionate for millennials. And, and I feel like this could be a really good opportunity for millennials. And then of course, Gen Z, Gen II and and younger to start to get a foothold in the market where they can actually make a living and, and negotiate higher salaries as well better wage rates. This can all start to actually normalize the market, I think this could actually be pretty good. So anyway, my

Augusto Pinaud 21:44
next toys are set of toys, R Amazon lounge, a bunch of four products by products of new Alexis, so they went from budget to speakers, that looks very nice. The Echo, Papa now has three instead of the round as it was the last acre, they you can direct them better they show, they came this this product surprised me they came with a $50 a Cobots. The last Cobots they had was around 120 price it similar to the Apple ones. And now they went to play that Amazon game, let’s make them significantly cheap. So people try. So they also came with an echo one for the car, if you want to use the Amazon, Alexa and all that in the vehicle, so interesting devices, interesting things, and coming again, on that price point of Amazon, you know, that is very, very affordable, and they just want to make sure you are part of their ecosystem.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:58
Yep, I thought I really liked the the echo pop, I think it’s a well designed, beautiful, you know, device that I think people will like to have in their space. And they they have a green that I really like. So that helps. But I think the gray and the black versions are great. And there’s a purple version as well. But I think it’s you know, it’s a budget price. And it’s really nice that if you’re in the Amazon ecosystem, that you have something that you can feel comfortable having out in your space. And so I think that looks pretty good. All right, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 23:31
Our next story is a new artificial intelligence research that allows you to click and drag images and manipulate them and kind of scary, very interesting, very fun, but kind of scared nonetheless.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:48
Yeah, absolutely, I you know, the whole concept that you can now not trust any image to be what it truly is, you know, that’s that’s going to that’s going to be something that we have to contend with on a regular basis. The the technology is based on something called Dragon. And the idea is, is that you have this ability to manipulate tools. Now, we’ve had this before, I mean, we’ve had the visibility, anyone who has good Photoshop, Photoshop, or other kinds of similar skills have been able to do this for quite some time. But we’re now just seeing this more available, you know, and put into the hands of everyday people, which means that it’s going to make its way into the hands of more sophisticated criminals, people who are trying to sow dissent, that kind of thing. So you know, there’s, it’s a tool like a hammer is a hammer, you can you can build a house, or you can break a window with it right? So we need to be mindful of the fact that this is just new technology. And as much as it can make us more productive is where I’m excited. Right? You know, there are there are lots of photos of me that the company uses and that all and I just wish that they were just a little A different, you know, maybe I’m not smiling enough in the photograph, or I’ve got like wonky eyes, because the flash hit me at the wrong space and time. And now maybe this work, you know this, this new technology will be able to go ahead and similar to Photoshop, so Warp Tool, go ahead and fix those things so that I don’t feel as uncomfortable with it. Now I’d love for this AI to work its way into video, right so that it can clean up video throughout the course it will be here. Yeah, I mean, it’s only it’s only practical that it works, it will take a lot of processing power, because it’s got to go image by image, right frame by frame through the video and make those same changes. But why the heck not? When that happens. That’s a huge productivity savings, right. And it can solve for so many different things, very similar to the way that some of these AI, audio tools, you know, that clean up the audio and help filter the audio and fix it and post, it can be also really useful. I think the next step for me is not just a static image, but for film or video to be able to be edited in the same way. All right, onward to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 26:04
For the next one, he sold your shoe. So it’s all about Google one VPN, and how now it allows you to know your network, your IP, and what information you are actually using that for an advance your story makes sense for a non advanced user, I’m not sure how useful that will be.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:29
Yeah, so in the past, if you were in an environment where you felt like you needed to tell another tool, what your IP address is, so that you could like whitelist it, for example, you know, this happens inside of a WordPress website, when you have security turned on. This can happen inside of certain tools where you have to basically whitelist yourself so that it knows to let you log in from certain locations if you’re using VPN by Google one. So if you’re a Google one subscriber, meaning that you’re using at least the I think it’s the two terabyte plan for Google Drive or above, you get Google one. And that has a whole bunch of benefits. I mean, from like travel benefits, you get discounts on hotels, you get access to some, some support some higher level support from Google, you also get access to the VPN and some other things. Well, the the VPN itself, now just, I just, it’s a thoughtful additional piece of information, right? It shows you now in the interface, when you open it up, that your your VPN is turned on. And this is your IP address. And this is your network ID just a very, very simple way to see that information. So that when you are in that circumstance, very probably rare circumstance for some people, very common occurrence for others like myself, because I use a security plugin for all of my websites. So I need to go in and make sure that I put in my IP address and all of those places, I just want to know it really quickly and easily. That’s going to be different when I turn on the VPN. And so I need to go ahead and make sure that I have access to it. And now I don’t have to go to what’s my IP and Google to find out it’s right there in the VPN. And it makes it much simpler. So it’s a nice enhancement, I think it’s really great that it gives us that that ability to to quickly have that in the in the dashboard, right there and GPA VPN by Google one.

Augusto Pinaud 28:18
This is something that I need somebody to test for me, Windows 11, users can now link their iPhones and use iMessage from the PC. That’s something that I have always loved that I can grab my iPad, my Mac or my phone and have the same iMessage it will be very interesting to put it in MPC, the PCs that I have will not I will not test it. But I will be very interesting to hear what is the feeling from people to be able to do this now.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:53
Right? So this is pretty basic. I mean, it’s very, very basic at the present moment, it allows you to be able to send those messages over a Bluetooth connection to the phone link app. And so it’s it’s actually quite smart that it’s doing this because otherwise it probably wouldn’t be able to do so. And so it is a fairly seamless experience. I’ve found it to be somewhat annoying to have so many notifications going off in so many different places. And so yeah, I think that it’s it’s good that Microsoft has has put out this olive branch and created this connection through phone link. I really hope that over time, Microsoft phone link will allow you to do the same things that Samsung has done built into phone link which is allowing you to stream an app so you know if you have a Samsung Galaxy device, you can actually pull up Instagram and use Instagram on your desktop. You know connected to your phone. Right now you’re you’re not capable of doing those things. Even though I have a Google Pixel seven XL. I can’t do that. Alright, all I can do is really transmit messages. Now it does help because it will allow me to, to communicate across any messaging app that’s being utilized on the device, which is actually really, really helpful. So kind of the same thing applies on the iPhone level, this is just now by iMessage, you can use phone calls to send and receive, you know, make and receive phone calls. And then you get your notifications from the application from the Alert Center. So it’s a step in the right direction, certainly not enough functionality for me to be able to put my phone down and fully stay on the desktop at the same time. And that’s really what I’m looking for both on the iOS devices in my life, as well as my my Android devices, I want to be able to set them down and to use a full keyboard when I’m at a full keyboard, not withstanding what’s going on on the phone. And so great first step, looking forward to seeing it develop further

Augusto Pinaud 30:53
where this goes. So the next news we have is Verizon heat resets on their 5g, now they have new plans, new stream lines. So if you are a Verizon users go and check, you know, they went back to you can now do a limit that you know, $10 arc, either don’t you know, Disney plus family music. So they, they’re really trying to attract and he’s obviously coming in a great moment, we are expecting announcements of new phones, even though the phones may not be out until October, we know that between now. And October Verizon AT and T and T Mobile will push very hard for upgrades and everything else. So like the next article, oops, go ahead. Sorry, the next article was also from the Virgin is how to hardwire your home without an Ethernet on the walls. And it was a very interesting article, I have seen the use of the old cable coaxial cables to do it, but I wasn’t fully aware of how much the technology has evolved into using your power lines to extend it. That was I was not fully aware how much the technology had improved. So it sent me in a little rabbit trail with you, but but it is a great option. As the article say, for some people, the best option continue being the mesh, the mesh is not a solution for the hardwire, will never give you the stability of the hardwire, but it’s a solution for many people.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:44
Absolutely. So I can speak from my own experience, I did not have the coax option. So I have several bedrooms on my second level that that have coax, but the office that I decided to use the one of the bedrooms that has become the office that I wanted to use does not have a coax access point. And so I decided to use actually the power line version of it. Because I don’t have ethernet, it’s an older older unit. And so I didn’t have the Ethernet in this particular house. And so I’m using the, the TP Link, powerline based ones, and it’s working really well, you know, I’m getting I’m getting pretty rock solid speeds on the on the machines that are connected via Ethernet. And it’s a much more solid, you know, connection. And, and so it’s worth trying, right, but you know, like, you can order it, try it, see if it gives you good speeds if it doesn’t return it. And, and of course, I think that the Moca adapters are definitely better. But it also depends on the age of those of those cable lines, right of those optical lines, right. So if they’ve degraded over time, if they’re like 20 years old and 30 years old, those optical lines are potentially going to give you some some, some trouble. They may still be faster, though, than the power line based ones, especially if you have a lot of interference, right. So we have we have a lot of interference on those copper lines sometimes, or there’s just not enough power running across those lines, depending upon how the house is wired. So you just have to be conscious of that. For me, I haven’t had any issues I you know, my my, my power lines are pretty well connected to that main, you know, thoroughfare, so to speak. And so I’m getting I’m getting great speeds. And it didn’t have to have me have the electrician, rerun Ethernet cord up here. I tried, I definitely tried, but the way in which they would have had to have, you know, worked around it, they would have had to open up all kinds of walls. And I just really didn’t feel like dealing with that. So this was a great, inexpensive option for being able to bring, you know, broadband wired broadband into the office without a problem. So I highly recommend it for folks. If you you know, I was I was going to invest in a mesh system, and I probably still will but For the main computers that I want accessing, especially when I’m here on live video, I want that level of connectivity, I don’t want to deal with, you know, a video meeting that drops out because Wi Fi for some reason decided to get wonky, because my neighbor decided to turn on their, you know, am radio, you know, all of that kind of radio attention, attenuation can cause problems, you know, being wired really solves for that problem. Alright, and with that, that brings us to the end of our technology headlines for this week and onto our new tools of the week. So Augusto and I come across many personal development time tasks, project management and productivity, collaboration tools and services each week, some we use some standout from the pack. And so in this segment, new tools of the week, we each bring you a tool we think you might like and so this week, I am going to bring you cron, Cron is a new calendar application. And of course connects to other applications out there. But the idea is to just have a more beautiful and feature rich calendaring experience. And so it has applications for Mac, iOS, and Windows. So it covers you across those three, it does not have an Android application that I’m aware of. And it is a premium calendar tool. So you do have to pay for it as opposed to like your free Google Calendar. You know, we’re free Outlook calendar, that outlook is not free anymore. But you don’t mean like the the free calendar application on your Microsoft System, the free calendar application on your Apple system, it is it is not going to be that. But I have to say, you know, I’ve played with cron off, on and off again, just kind of like seeing whether or not it’s something that I like, and when I am using it, I really like it, you know, now do I like it enough to pay for it? I haven’t yet right? Like I’ve paid for it here in there in order to utilize it. But I just haven’t found myself going to that point where I’m like, Okay, I’m going to be on cron all the time. And it probably is because of the nature of my work where I’m dealing with clients who are not using this tool. And so therefore, just for the best compatibility and staying inside the ecosystem, and using the tools that my clients are using, I’ve stayed away from it. But if you’d like a really beautiful application that works rock solid, and has a lot of nice natural language features, like just how you can say to your google assistant, or to your apple assistant, or otherwise, you know, hey, blank, you know, add a calendar event and then speak out the calendar event, you can do that in cron, you could just open up the almost like the the spotlight feature on the Mac OS or Alfred is open up that that one line, type in the meeting name, and it will automatically go ahead and create the event in the time and date and space that you want it to. So there’s a lot of those just really refined features within cron that I really like. So something for you to check out, look at, see if it’s something that you might want to utilize. Okay, so what is your new tool this week?

Augusto Pinaud 37:58
Well, then my neutral other week is called Shadow PC. And it’s basically a virtual PC, it costs around $33 or start around $33 a month. But as a person whose main machine is an iPad, I virtual machines are nice. And I don’t necessarily want to have a Windows machine in my desk, I just want to connect to one once in a while. So these kind of things are great solutions, you know, we have I have covered in the past here in the show, jump that is one that allows you to connect to remote machines. But this service will basically give you a full virtual machine, you will go somewhere most likely an Amazon server connect and have the full experience that they will help you maintain with a PC where you can install stuff and test stuff or work. So if you are in need of that you really don’t want to buy another hardware. This is a good option.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:06
Yeah, it’s a fantastic tool. I think that you know when you need to do something like this where you need to like stream, a Windows application of some kind or those kinds of like gnarly situations. This can really be a lifesaver. It’s kind of like parallels or you know, wine on the Mac OS system where you can basically bring the Windows environment onto the system. But you’ve got to install Windows there, this you’re just pulling it up and utilizing it in a cloud environment, which really keeps the impact on your overall operating system pretty low. Fantastic. Fantastic. All right. What else do we have today? Do we have some news?

Augusto Pinaud 39:46
Oh, do bring us to our news of the week and his Google plans to delete all those accounts that has been inactive for the last couple of years and this is no Don’t hurt of Apple has a similar plan. But it is something that a lot of people was not aware of. And it’s been caused some, some noise on the internet even you will find another article that we will add to the show notes where Ted Ryan, from MIT Technology Review talks about their useful life isn’t some permanence as you think. And it’s talking about parents who pass and they keep the access to the emails on their Google accounts. And well now, because of lack of use, that information may be deleted, and how you are backing them up how we have discussion here in the show, backing up your calendar, you know, things happen when you have it online. But what happened with your email was your calendar was your picture. So it is important to remember that all these digital things is not as permanent as we think. Yeah, so

Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:01
a couple clarifications, as you said, it is for any account that has been unused or not signed into for at least two years. So it has to be at least 24 months. And they are starting with accounts that literally have not been used at all, in since its inception, right. So someone created an account, and it’s just been sitting there fallow, without any activity. This is, of course, I think, just good from an environmental impact perspective, you know, like those servers are running and keeping those accounts live and active for no reason. I’m sure there’s cost to Google. So this is a great cost savings measure. And maybe they will raise prices on Google workspace again. You know, like all of those kinds of things that I think are good for for us in that sense. I use this opportunity to remind everybody about the Google Font inactivity account manager, so you can set up for all of your Google accounts, a Google inactivity, account manager, this is an individual, right, so someone that you trust, who will be able to gain access to your Google account, after a set amount of time where you have not been active with it anymore. So say that you become mentally or physically incapacitated, right, you have a trip and fall and you lose capacity in some way, shape or form. You’re no longer mentally or physically able to access your account. Maybe you forgot you even had the account, right? That inactivity account manager after that requisite time now gains access to your account automatically, they’re sent an email and said, hey, this person hasn’t logged into this account. And so you have been automatically given access to it. Google consistently reminds you about this, by the way, so it doesn’t just like you don’t just set it up and then forget about it. They will every I forget what it is every six months, once a year, they basically notify you and say, Hey, by the way, do you still want this inactivity account manager to have access to your account in case you don’t access your account in X number of months. And that’s really, really useful. So set that up, make sure that you have an inactivity account manager, just go to my accounts.google.com. And you’ll find that there in the settings, then this doesn’t really become a problem for you. Right? Because Because if something were to happen, you would that would be the first line of defense, your activity account manager would be like, Hey, Ray, I see that you haven’t logged into your account for six months. So maybe you should go ahead and login and figure it out? Or are you dead? Right? Like what’s going on? You know, why didn’t you log into your account? So

Augusto Pinaud 43:25
hopefully, you pick somebody who will know, in less than six months about that, that, but anyways, the show notes will have the link on more details about the inactive account manager, what happened? How do you detect and all that you were explaining? So from the Google support page,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 43:43
right, absolutely. And just so you know, any activity on the account is really anything you do in terms of accessing the accounts, that includes watching a YouTube video, it could be sending an email, even just opening up an email, you know, using Google Drive any of the Google services doing Google search, right, any of those things are going to trigger the account to know that it’s still active, so it’s really not going to be a problem with any of those issues. You know, I think this is going to impact a very, very small number of unused accounts. And of course, people who ultimately, you know, pass away and are no longer utilizing those accounts and don’t have an activity account manager. So very limited use I know it hit hit the kind of the headlines to a lot of people, but I think this is a wake up call for us all, as you said a Gousto. Right, our digital lives are not as permanent as we think they are, according to that article, and really just reality, as well as the fact that, you know, we shouldn’t have accounts that we’re not using anyway, get rid of that, you know, cruft and, and streamline your life. If you are not using an account, that’s it’s a pretty easy process now to do. You can forward your emails to a centralized account, and just let everybody know, hey, I’m no longer using this account. And, you know, simplify, simplify here, I think is a good message to remind everybody about. Alright, do we have any announcements?

Augusto Pinaud 44:56
We got a couple. So one is the end We have Drobo. Drobo was a company who specialized in putting hard drives on boxes. So you could create NASS in home and it’s out of business. And it’s very sad. I never owned one. But I but I there technology on similar technology, so it was very sad to see Drobo go. The other announcement we have is one password. We mentioned about one password and the past key support. And it’s now have a date June 6, it will lounge. So that is in complement of our last episode when we talk about the one password and the past keys. And to finalize, we have a couple of rumor news one, yes, sorry.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 45:57
Before we move on, no, I just wanted to let anyone know if they are using passage by one password. I’d really love to know what your experiences with it. So passage is the functionality that adds pass keys to your app, or to your website. So if you publish an app, if you’re a developer who publishes an app, or if you are a website publisher, and you are utilizing past keys on the website, I would just I just really love to like, let us know, you know, shoot us a tweet, send us a message, you know, through the through anything but idle.com forward slash contact, let us know how you’re utilizing it. Because I’m really interested to seeing whether or not this password list login experience will be something that is easy for people to implement, because I think it can be really, really useful for a lot of people. So anyway, I just I wanted to ask that of our listeners. If you if you have that experience.

Augusto Pinaud 46:44
Yeah, please let us know. So I’m under rumors. Well, we’re two things. One is if you feel fed up about your windows 11 machine, nagging or Windows 10, nagging you to upgrade. Well, the bad news is seems like Microsoft is doubled down. So, so sorry for you. But on an exciting news seems like Amazon is going to be releasing a new Kindle Oasis in 2023, Kindles Oasis tend to be the high end of the Kindle line. And I’m very curious with this rumor, how they’re going to integrate the scribble that that’s a Kindle that you can handwrite on with the technology of the LIC So are you going to see both things are you going to see there’s not very enough information on the article. But it is going to be I think, very interesting to see what Amazon does with that high end device.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:47
Yeah, absolutely. I have a Kindle scribe. And I really like it. It’s a great device. And there are some limitations to the device that people have noted those that I actually like it having. So it’s just a it forces you to really think as you are writing, which slows you down. And I think that the more we are given too easy a pass at what we are writing down, the less engaged we are with the content. And so a lot of people say Oh, well, you know, students with laptops, they learn less, or they retain less, because they’re typing, as opposed to when they’re writing on physical paper. And I think what it is, is that they are not focused on the content that they are typing, right. And the more you focus on the content that you’re typing, the more the challenge, the more difficult it is, then then, of course, the greater you will, you will remember that stuff. So it’s not really a matter of the technology, it happens to be how much that person is trained on using the technology well, for you know, just from a brain science perspective. So I really would like to see what the Kindle Oasis is going to do. That’s going to be different from the scribe, and we’ll see what happens. So all good things there. But interesting news. And so with that we’ve covered the productivity and technology news this week. Thank you, Augusto, for everything. And I’ll see you next week. Okay, everybody on anything but idle.com, you’ll find our show notes with links to all the stories are tools of the week, all the extra stories that we didn’t cover and a text transcript to read and download if you’d like. It’s available as text on the page. But you can also download the PDF and read it offline while you’re listening. Also, if we miss something, feel free to let us know you can do that via Twitter, you can DM us at Anything But Idle you can use our contact form at anything but idle.com forward slash contact but the best thing to do is to join our community we have a community at anything but idle.com forward slash community that’s there on the screen anything but idle.com forward slash community. You will join personal productivity club that’s free and then once you’re inside at the anything but idle.com/community community group you can comment on the episode of the week you can engage with the other listeners and and have a great time all right everybody I thank you all for joining us we will see you next time on Anything But Idle here’s your productive life.

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